child labour by providing under Section 163 (7) (b) and (c) that a holder of a mining licence
shall not employ or in any way use child labour or forced labour or promote trafficking in
persons by recruiting trafficked persons.
216 Where a holder of a mining licence by its operations acquiring or gaining access to land
causes any physical displacement of persons, they are required to make resettlement plan or
compensation processes, as provided for under Section 225 of the Act.
Article 25- Duty to Promote Human Rights
217 In 2018, the National Statistical Office and the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional
Affairs, conducted a Justice and Democratic Accountability Survey to assess the impact
of sector policy goals and strategies in increasing access to justice and improving
accountability and track progress made on a set of indicators laid down in the Democratic
Governance Sector Strategy.
218
At national level, the results of the survey show that, 90.7 percent of all respondents are
aware of their basic human rights and freedoms. The results further reveal that the
proportion among members of the public who are aware of human rights and freedoms has
almost doubled in the past seven years, rising from the 45.8 percent in the 2011 Malawi
Justice Baseline, to the 90.7 percent reported in the current survey. The evidence of the
high levels of awareness of human rights and freedoms reported above is reinforced by
the findings from focus group discussions which also reflected very high levels of
general awareness of human rights in general across all regions and in both rural and
urban areas.
219
The results further show that 79.8 percent of the respondents mentioned right to food as
most important human right; 69.9 percent mentioned the right to life as most important,
21.1 percent stated the right to personal liberty as most important; the right to education
stood at 23.6, while the right to housing was mentioned at 28.5 percent.
220
In relation to violation of human rights, the survey shows that 13.0 percent of respondents
experienced physical forms of violation, 12.6 percent had their rights verbally violated
while 11.0 percent experienced psychological forms of violation and another 2.5 percent
experienced sexual forms of violation.
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